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The God Who Calms Our Fears Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis March 29, 2009, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Exodus 14:19-30 John 6:16-21
I think it fair to say that this nautical story sandwiched in the middle of John’s sixth chapter between the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus’ declaration that he is “the bread of life” is often and easily misunderstood. Take, for instance, Pastor Franck Kabele who, in August of 2006, had a revelation. Apparently God informed him in a dream that if he just had enough faith he could walk on water like Jesus. When the time of testing came, his congregation gathered on a beach somewhere along the western coast of Africa to watch. According to the newspaper article, “He walked into the water, which soon passed over his head, and he never came back.” I am sorry to inform some of you that I have not had such a revelation! Or consider Doran Nof. In April of 2008, a few weeks after Easter, the New York Times called attention to the scientific suppositions of Mr. Nof, a professor of oceanography at Florida State. Published in the Journal of Paleolimnology (a journal our own Ruth Patrick must know well), Dr. Nof and his colleagues hypothesized that there may have been unusual freezing processes in the region of the Sea of Galilee some 12,000 years ago, icing over parts of what was then and still is a seven mile wide freshwater lake. You can imagine where this is going! Apparently Galilee has warm, salty springs along the part of the coast that Jesus and his disciples frequented. “The water above the springs does not convect when it is cold,” the Times explained. “If air temperatures dipped below freezing, as sometimes happened then, surface ice could have formed thick enough to support human weight.” Enter Jesus walking on ice. Suffice it to say, both Professor Nof and the late Pastor Kabele presumed John’s story to be literally true: presumed that Jesus in fact did walk on the sea without sinking or that the disciples actually saw him coming toward them on the surface of the water, a surface that had turned to ice one cold and dark night very long ago. Be assured: I do not doubt that the God who, in the fullness of time, pitched a tent with us in Jesus Christ could also walk on water; nor do I doubt that ice naturally may have formed 12,000 years ago on the same lake that tourists navigate today. I do, however, think both efforts at believing leave us in the shallows of John’s gospel; because, most of the time, taking the Bible literally keeps us from taking God’s Word seriously. The literal interpretation of Scripture has confounded Christ’s church not to mention Jesus himself from the beginning. Take the debates between Jesus and the religious experts concerning the meaning of the law right up to the debate yesterday on the floor of Presbytery the ordination of gay and lesbian Presbyterians: the most religious of any age have never been known for interpretive nuance. Diogenes Allen of Princeton Seminary (who was our Lenten lecturer about a decade ago) writes that he “used to think [his] task as a philosopher and a clergyman was to keep the possibility of God at least open, as though the struggle were between religion and no religion.” Lately he has come to believe that the “more pressing problem is not a shortage of religion, but far too much bad religion….If, for example,” says Allen, “one accepts miracles, demons, angels, and telepathy, then why not astrology, fortune-telling, premonitions of the future, ghosts, witches, werewolves, and vampires?” Yet we read that even the disciples could not distinguish the difference between a ghost and the living God. In Matthew’s account the disciples were terrified when they saw Jesus walking on water saying, “It is a ghost!” Matthew, by the way, goes on to mention Peter’s failed attempt to join Jesus on the surface of the sea, an editorial addition that should have warned Pastor Kabele not to try this at home. The disciples in Mark also suppose Jesus to be a ghost and are terrified. The response is reminiscent of the response to Jesus’ appearances after the resurrection, leaving us to ask how we are to discern the difference between a revelation of the living God and a dreamy apparition that suggests we try walking on water ourselves. Luke alone forgoes the marvel of Jesus walking on water for a miracle that, I think, gives us a better shot at good religion. Jesus is in the boat fast asleep when he is wakened by the disciples’ fearful shouts. In response he not only rebukes the wind and the raging waves, writes Luke, but also the disciples’ lack of faith. The theological implication (to which we will return in a moment) is that God alone commands the winds and the water. Hence this story is not a story about an experience of the supernatural. It was told by Luke to reveal God’s power and presence in Jesus Christ. John’s telling of the same wonder is the most modest of all. Unlike the account in Matthew and Mark where the disciples are instructed by Jesus to go on ahead to the other side of the lake, John’s Jesus abandons the disciples without a word. As evening draws near, they finally decide to go down to the sea on their own, get into a boat and set out without him. Why they did this God only knows and John does not say. Why do any of us decide to set out in the dark or on deep waters without him? We set out, we say in retrospect, because when we began the journey (when we bet our future on the market or blithely said “I do” at the end of this aisle or ignored the doctor’s orders or took out that second mortgage), at the start of things the weather reports called for fair skies and calm seas. It never occurred to us that we might need him in the boat, be that boat a metaphor for our household of origin or the household of faith. Moreover like the disciples who were experienced fishermen and did not give a thought to the potential danger ahead of them, so we have always found ourselves able to rely on luck or good looks or our expertise, we say, to stay afloat. We calm our fears with this self-made narrative that assures us we have no need of him every hour. But now that the evening has come and it is dark [this is never an idle detail for John, by the way] and the hour is late and the sea has become rough because a strong wind is blowing, it occurs to us in our terror before the prospect of financial ruin or major surgery or marital distress or an open grave that it would be helpful to have him in the boat. Though truthfully after all these years, we believe no less than a miracle would land him by our side. This is often when bad religion comes in. These are the times in which people begin rattling beads, lighting candles in the dark, buying lottery tickets, making deals [I promise to stop smoking or drinking or fooling around if the doctor says I do not have cancer]. Some have even been known to return to the church as though here they could conjure him or channel him or take him by force and make him save them from the storm without and within that has become their lot. Parenthetically, Luke would relieve us of this illusion by reminding us that we are vulnerable to the storm even with Jesus in the boat because he sleeps like a baby through most of the storms that send us to our knees in a panic. And even if should it happen that the terrified tone of our prayers rouses him and we coincidentally find ourselves returned to the prosperity or fidelity or felicity or fair weather of our beseeching, we likely will thank our lucky stars for a sorcerer’s magic long before we will tremble before the God revealed in him who rebuked the waves. Therefore at the end of the day, when the darkness really gathers, it is John’s gospel that invites us to fathom the depth of God’s saving grace revealed on the high seas of Galilee. In the first place, precisely because this is a story that takes place on the water, John means to bring to mind the waters God separated from dry land at creation and the waters God’s judgment recalled in the flood; the waters God parted when Egypt was in hot pursuit of God’s people and the waters God closed against the enemy. This is a story told by John that we might know the God who both created the heavens and the earth in the beginning and redeemed God’s people from destruction at noonday. When Jesus calms the waters of chaos, he does what only God has done before. God comes to us over the troubled waters of our chaotic lives in Jesus Christ that we might begin again. Therefore no matter the complete mess you have made of your life, the darkness that threatens to overtake you, the sickness unto death that keeps you from life, the God we know in Jesus Christ knows you are at your wits’ end and will plant your feet once again upon the firm foundation of God’s mercy and God’s grace. But I think for John we still have not come to the heart of the matter. When Jesus reaches the boat Jesus says to the terrified disciples, literally translated, “I am; no fear.” As we soon will see in the next few chapters of this gospel, John adds to Jesus’ I am (“ego eimi”): the bread of life, the light of the world, the gate, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way, the truth and the life, the vine. But on the chaos of the stormed-tossed sea, Jesus says simply, “I am.” For John I think this is a story of God’s appearance. Technically the word is theophany. Notice that John does not report any fright on the part of the disciples because of the rough waters, only terror at the sight of Jesus coming to them, only trembling because in him they are having to do with the presence of the living God. “It is only here,” says Karl Barth in words I have oft repeated to you, “with all due respect to our fear of life--that it is really worthwhile to be afraid. Here hearts and reins are tried. Here the question is awe and not agitation. Here no one can escape and no one can console himself. Having reached the ultimate limit of all that we fear, where God is revealed to us, we are no longer afraid of this or the next thing, but of [God] alone.” My friends, the God in whose living presence all other fears fall away is the God who thereby calms our fears and comes to us in Jesus Christ. He is neither a ghost nor a magician but the one through whom the heavens and the earth (the firm ground on the other side of chaos) were created and by whom our chaotic lives are redeemed. Invite him into the boat you can no longer row against the wind and the storm without him and I promise you: he will bring you to that desired haven of peace and felicity where you were destined in love to be God’s own from the foundations of the world. Thanks be to God. |